A small crowd of people peer through a police barricade in the district of Sur in Diyarbakır, south-east Turkey, as heavy artillery and machine-gun fire echo through the streets. Most are friends and relatives of an estimated 200 people thought to be trapped on the other side, living among ruined buildings in a neighbourhood that has been under curfew for months.

An armoured vehicle accelerates towards the fence then comes to a halt, spitting out a masked policeman who aims his automatic rifle towards the retreating crowd. “Back! Go back!” another officers shouts. Turning to his colleague, he points at a machine gun mounted on the armoured vehicle, laughs, and says: “You should have turned that towards them, too.”

Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east has suffered the worst violence in two decades since a ceasefire between Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) fell apart last July, leaving the three-year peace process in tatters and reviving a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people since 1984.

The destruction of Sur: is this historic district a target for gentrification?

Read more

In August last year Kurdish activists announced local administrative autonomy for Sur – one of several attempts at self-rule in cities and towns across the region.

Turkey’s government, unnerved by the possibility of more Kurdish autonomy along the lines of that which exists on the country’s borders with Syria and Iraq, responded with a violent crackdown. Hundreds of militants, security forces and civilians have been killed since last summer.

Blanket curfews were imposed on several towns and districts in the region, with much of Sur placed under lockdown since 3 December as Turkish security forces attempt to flush Kurdish militants from urban areas. Militants from the youth wing of the PKK responded by digging trenches and setting up checkpoints. Violent clashes have laid waste to the neighbourhood.

This week, Turkish police used plastic bullets, teargas and water cannons against thousands of demonstrators protesting the curfew in Diyarbakır.

Human rights groups, NGOs, local trade organisations and EU parliamentarians have asked the Turkish authorities to allow for a 24-hour suspension of the curfew and the establishment of a humanitarian corridor, so that civilians still trapped inside embattled parts of Sur can safely be evacuated. Last week Diyarbakır’s governor, Hüseyin Aksoy, agreed to suspend fire for one and a half hours on consecutive days in the city, during which the police used loudspeakers to demand everyone still left amid the ruined buildings to surrender, but many fear the consequences if they do.

“My brothers are afraid to come out, they don’t trust the police not to kill them,” says Mehmet Karatay, a man in his late 40s. “Why should they surrender? They are civilians, their houses are there. They did not want to abandon them because they were afraid of losing everything they have. They never thought that this siege would go on for this long, none of us thought that it would get this bad.”

The governor maintains that all those who wish to leave the battlezone can safely do so. “If there are terrorists among those who wish to come out, their safety is also guaranteed by the state. They should come out, too, and we will hand them over to the law,” he said on Tuesday. The government accuses Kurdish militants of using children as human shields.

Fatma, 39, a mother of four children, says her 12-year-old son Mehmet Salih was trapped when he snuck into the district during one brief 17-hour lift of the curfew in mid-December. “He went there from school, he was curious,” she says. “I am so worried, I have not heard from him for two and a half months.”

Local residents, caught in the crossfire, bear the brunt of the violence. According to research conducted by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Peoples’ party (HDP), an estimated 290 have been killed in areas across south-east Turkey since the first curfews were declared in August, 25 of whom died in Sur. The Turkish general chief of staff has said about 200 armed militants have been killed in clashes, as well as 60 military and police, but reliable numbers are hard to obtain.

“It’s hell here,” says a young police officer, standing guard at a checkpoint. “I have been here for three months, since the beginning of the curfew, in mud and ice. They killed many of our brothers.” An elderly woman ambles past, addressing him in Kurdish, her tone defiant. “Terrorist granny! Get out of here!” the officer snaps.

People run away from tear gas in the centre of Diyarbakir. Photograph: Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images

Many in Diyarbakır feel that they are now being punished for Kurdish successes in Syria, where Turkey has tried – so far in vain – to convince western allies to label the YPG, the PKK’s Syrian sister organisation, as a terrorist organisation. But Sur residents also blame the PKK for moving the fight into towns and cities.

“I am very angry at the PKK. Why did they bring the war to our doorstep? If these militants wouldn’t have dug the trenches, if they wouldn’t have started this autonomy business, the police would have never come here,” says a 35-year-old minibus driver from Bingöl. “We are the only ones suffering now. I believed in the Kurdish cause before, but I voted for the AKP [the ruling party] in November. I’m fed up.”

Local NGOs say human rights abuses in the region increased after Turkey’s elections last June, and surged after the breakdown of the ceasefire a month later. Reports of police violence and abuse are rampant. Tens of thousands of children are unable to go to school. Medical care has been disrupted. According to Dr Zeki Parlak and Murat Aba, volunteers at the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey, torture at the hands of security officers has been on the rise over the past six months.

“There is a general atmosphere of lawlessness,” says Parlak. “The police feel that they have the backing of the government, that they are untouchable. The Turkish president [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] publicly encouraged local officials to disregard the rules if need be. So many civilians have been killed, and there is no investigation into any of these deaths. Police officers think: ‘If killing people is no problem, why would anyone make a fuss about a few punches?’”

Reha Ruhavioğlu, of the human rights organisation Mazlumder, says the situation could spin out of control. “The situation is very problematic if [the government] acts like a criminal organisation,” he says. “If you act in disregard of the law today, tomorrow citizens might reciprocate in the same way.” Ruhavioğlu makes clear that he has also been very vocal in his criticism of the PKK, especially their decision to take the fight into cities and towns. “But this does not give the police leave to commit these crimes.”

A recent report by Turkey’s main opposition, the Republican People’s party, revealed that about 80% of all buildings inside the Sur curfew zone had been destroyed, and that most people had left even the intact parts of the neighbourhood for fear of the violence. According to the Turkish health minister, Mehmet Müezzinoğlu, about 355,000 citizens have been displaced by the continuing clashes in the Kurdish region. While some have been lodged in local hotels, most Kurdish families have either found shelter with relatives in the region or rented flats in nearby areas, putting many in debt. Eleven people were evacuated overnight and on Thursday morning, local media reported.

‘There is a general atmosphere of lawlessness,’ said a volunteer at Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation. Photograph: Ilyas Akengin/AFP/Getty Images

Forty-year-old Hanife Okatan, a mother of three, now rents a small flat in Diyarbakır’s poor Baglar district. She says she has to rely on the charity of neighbours and the municipality. “We tied a white shirt to a stick and left the house like that. We could not take anything,” she explains. “We had such a beautiful house, right next to the Chaldean church.” She says the government has given financial assistance to some families who had to leave Sur, but she has not received any money. Instalments for her new freezer and her new washing machine, both of which are now lost between the ruins, are still pending.

The “dirty war” of the 1980s and 90s displaced up to 1.2 million Kurds. Most of these people fled to the big cities in the western part of the country, where job prospects were better, but this has changed.

“It is important to point out that the vast majority of those who have been displaced do not move to the west of the country,” says one Diyarbakır teacher. “When the Turkish government burned down people’s villages in the 90s, many Kurds moved to Turkish cities in the west, to Istanbul and Izmir. Now most people do not want to live with the Turks. It is a sign of how deep the rift between us has become.”

Aksoy, the Diyarbakır governor, said this week that 98% of Sur’s embattled districts “have been cleaned up” and the security operation was drawing to a close.

Local businessmen and traders are increasingly desperate. Most shops in Sur are closed, and only a handful of restaurants are open. Hotels in the historic district are empty, or closed altogether. The district, where several local sites were added to the Unesco world heritage list only last year, now resembles a half-destroyed ghost town.

Sakine, a 35-year-old Sur resident who had to leave her house, is angry at Europe, too. “The EU knows what is happening here. Because they are afraid of the refugees, they have sold us Kurds, they have abandoned us,” she says. “I hope that their bad conscience will eat them up inside.”